These things were inexcusable. So were many others. Apparently the ordinarily astute first director-general made a great mistake at the outset. He did not realize perhaps that he was attempting to do two things at once--trying to solve an acute war problem as well as a great economic one that had been gathering urgency for nearly a decade before the coming of the World War. That at least is a kind construction to place upon his policy. And if it was indeed his policy it was not so very different from that which was followed those days by many other large activities down at Washington. Apparently we have not yet learned that almost any war problem is separate and distinct from those of our great social economic questions that are forever showing themselves in one form or another. For instance a good many of us confused the problems of the capitalization and labor of the railroads with that of taking them over as an emergency war measure, just as we repeatedly mixed up all sorts of social and economic problems with the making of an emergency war revenue tax. Such apparently is also a fair construction to place upon Mr. McAdoo's remarkable activities in setting great forces of designers and draftsmen at work to create new "standardized" locomotives and cars for our temporarily nationalized railroad system. He made a widely circulated statement that he had found "2303 different styles of freight-cars and almost as many different descriptions of locomotives" and that these presently would be reduced by his experts to twelve standard types of freight-cars, and to six standard types of locomotives of two weights each. Unquestionably our railroad freight equipment has stood and still stands greatly in need of much standardization, although the roads themselves long ago established enough of this to permit common operation of their cars. But I doubt if such a standardization program had any real part in an emergency war plan. I never have been able to reason that out to my own satisfaction. Nevertheless McAdoo was satisfied with his own idea and in 1918 alone ordered 1430 of his standard locomotives and about 100,000 of the freight-cars, at prices enormously above those of peace days. The engines and the cars eventually were delivered. That they were good engines and good cars I do not doubt. But they have never enjoyed any marked popularity with the railroad operating people. They are a conservative lot, these old hard-shell railroad executives who still hang on to a remarkable degree all the way across the land. You cannot lead them easily to new ways of thought.